Unity 5 to Unity 2021 android performance tips

Hello to unity mobile game developers

I have worked on mobile games about 2 years. These are my performance experiences on unity 5 and mobile devices:
My main target is Lenovo A3300 with mali400 GPU

Download all in one documentation

1. You can change unity height map resolution to reduce terrain triangles(note: after changing height map resolution, your created height map will be lose)



2. Unity default sky box uses IBL lighting shader. you need avoid unity default skybox for mobile devices. Its drop around 20 fps on mobile devices. Replace default sky box with new one and change Ambient Source to Color.



3.One of the easier ways to achieve high frame rates is that reduce screen resolution: My best choice for low end devices is 800x450(16:9) or 900x506 (16:9)



4.Fastest shader for mobiles is Mobile->Vertex Lit shader that reduce draw calls and calculate lighting on Vertex's instead of Pixels.

5. For particles you can easily reduce max particle counts and set particle size to larger value for same results


6. You can optimize scripts with this function


7. Occlusion culling is not suitable for mobiles. you can use this best solution for mobile devices without problem:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35100

 

8.Child all static game objects to an empty game object (called "Scene")and set its as static for static batching and reduce draw calls
Unity Manual Link




9.Best performance and good quality settings for low end android devices

Best performance and good quality settings for mid-high end android devices

 

10. Set your terrain shader to Legacy Diffuse in terrain settings

 

Good tips, so what is wrong with occlusion culling? I read that occlusion culling is good for mobile? According to our profiler, "culling" is taking like, 30% of our CPU in the profiler! Any idea? Check our post here https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/android-culling-performance.437749/

 

No. OC is not good for mobile at all. It makes a lot of lags on Low-End mobiles.
I suggested that you can use Per-Layer Camera Clipping Instead of OC. I've tested it already. It is the best solution for culling on mobiles. You don't need to cull terrain along with other game objects. Its also reduce draw calls.
My test on the big scene:

 

11. Some devices like Xperia Z1 has good GPU chip. but when you play some games like asphalt 8, these games run slowly. Its because Z1 native resolution is 1080p and 1080p is very heavy even for PS4. You can set your default resolution to 720p and run your game with solid 60 fps even with a lots of effects and heavy shaders.

Not much difference between 1080 and 720 on 6 inch screen.

 

How do you do custom resolutions, for example half res, on every different screen size?

Thanks!

 

You can read this in first post
it is simple:


These is 16:9 resolutions list:
1980x1920
1600x900
1280x720
900x506
800x450
700x394
640x360

Reducing resolution is the best solution to run games smoothly on every devices. you can run a game with 3 images effects with 640x360 res on low end devices.
I'm added resolution setting to my games settings menu for support to every devices. Players can turn on image effects and reduce resolution or vice versa

You need add this codes to your main camera on the scene. I set main menu resolution to 1280x720 and game scene resolution according to selected on settings menu.
You can see Xbox one is 50% less powerful than ps4, but with lower resolution it can run games smoother than ps4!!!

 

hi aliyeredon2
thanks for the tip they re really usefull, especially for low end mobile, i tryed Per-Layer Camera Clipping it kind of work
but for some reason all the mesh that has collision mesh component lose their collision . any idea how to fix that?
cheers

 

ah nevermind i find my problem, when creating a new layer i had to enable physic in the physic manager.
cheers

 

12. You can simply bake normal map and occlusion map into diffuse texture with photo shop. Its similar to shader code in runtime(multiply occlusion texture to diffuse texture)
Watch tutorial
Download free rocks:Link

Compare result:

 

Heres a great video that helped me a lot!

Especially when you import your models disable the Read/Write toggle
Also when theyre not needed set normals & tangents to none

I gained about 15-20 fps just from this

 

I should test it
Thank you

 

No problem let me know if it works, I went from a pretty unplayable game on low end devices (I am using Xperia E3 for testing) to smooth game play. Was really happy!

 

I've tested it.Nothing has changed. I've tested on Unity 4&5.
tested on LenovoA 3500 with Mali400 gpu...

 

13. Terrain optimization



New test with Per-Layer Camera Clipping

 

Nice tips! shall use these in my projects.

 

I love 60 fps games
My last game tests:

Lenovo A3500 - Mali400 MP2
Resolution : 900*506
Terrain pixel error = 200
Per-Layer camera clipping used for everythings
AmplifyColor
fps : 40-50



Xperia Z1 - Adreno 330
Resolution : 1280x720
Terrain pixel error = 200
Per-Layer camera clipping used for everything
AmplifyColor + Unity sun shaft
60 fps with 4 enemies

 

In this site you can find mobile gpus power and compare to consoles and each others
http://kyokojap.myweb.hinet.net/gpu_gflops/


For example my Mali 400 MP2 has 9 GFlops and my Xperia has 120 GFlops power.
Xbox 20
X360 240
Xbox One 1311
Xbox One S 1405

 

Looking good, what are the batches/verts in the screenshots you posted above?
Game looks great by the way.

 

Without Per-Layer camera clipping:
batches : 181
verts : 93k

With Per-Layer camera clipping:
batches: 93
verts : 55k

 

My new test with Kino Bloom effect. Its really AAA bloom effect and works very good on mobiles.
https://github.com/keijiro/KinoBloom

Typically image effects eat half of the frame rate.

My test on Lenovo A3500 with mali400 mp2 GPU
720p : game is run smooth without bloom and has very lag when bloom is on
900*506 : game is run smooth with bloom effect (30fps)

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

@aliyeredon2 Quick question, I noticed in your quality settings you said the anstropic textures set to forced on?
I thought that it was faster to have it off, what is the reason for this?

 

It's just for better texture quality. Especially on road textures.

 

Hey, @aliyeredon2 just for you, and anyone else who is wondering, I would not set anisotropic to "forced on"... on my S3, it looses around 20 FPS, instead of you want clear textures, you can set it to "per texture" and then you can bump up the aniso levels on import settings.

 

My new test: (Fully light mapped + Light Probes)
5.3.4 (fps is same):

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

Interesting, I am sure different devices handle aniso differently, so just be careful with having it forced on!

 

aliyeredon2, Are you always downscaling resolution to certain value? Or do you use some script and downscale different depending on max screen resolution of device?

I've tested my game on galaxy note 2(max 720 x 1280 pixels) down to 600 x1065 and it look very sharp, but when I took blackberry priv (max 1440 x 2560 pixels) down to 600 x1065 gives me some pixels.

 

First download and test my demo apk:
http://89.163.206.23/Truck_Demo.zip

I always add resolution options to my settings menu:

Spoiler: Screenshot

 

In unity 5 we need to reload the scene after changing resolution.
This is my code to reload the scene:

Code (CSharp):

1.             if (PlayerPrefs.GetInt ("Resolution") == 506)
2.                 Screen.SetResolution (900, 506, true);
3.             if (PlayerPrefs.GetInt ("Resolution") == 720)
4.                 Screen.SetResolution (1280, 720, true);
5.             if (PlayerPrefs.GetInt ("Resolution") == 1080)
6.                 Screen.SetResolution (1920, 1080, true);
7.      
8.  
9.         Camera.main.aspect  = 16f/9f;
10.  
11.  
12.  
13.         if(PlayerPrefs.GetInt("Loaded")!=3)
14.         {
15.             SceneManager.LoadScene(SceneManager.GetActiveScene().name);
16.             PlayerPrefs.SetInt("Loaded",3);
17.         }
18.         else
19.             PlayerPrefs.SetInt("Loaded",7);

 

Excellent tips! Many of them where unknown to me. Specially the skybox.

What happens if you force an aspect ratio different than the phone screen? Many tablets aren't 16:9 and some phones aren't too. Do they get black borders? Do they render in 16:9 but stretch it to their screen? Having fixed ratio is good for the UI too.

Also another question, is there anyway of getting some info about the GPU to automatically set the quality and resolution settings when the game first starts?

 

I've used 16:9 for common screen sizes. You need to add screen ratio option to game settings menu similar to other AAA games.
You can use this class to find GPU name and set the game settings to your needs
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SystemInfo.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SystemInfo-graphicsDeviceName.html

 

Would be nice to see profiler screenshots of the before and after along with ms timing changes over fps. Also thanks for the tips.

Managed to get rendering times down to under 4ms with over 100k tri's on screen. ( shaders haven't all been optimised yet )

I normally focus on optimising code which I have at 1.7ms and let the graphics guys go a bit crazy with the effects.
Running on a Samsung Galaxy s5

 

Isn't this bad for objects that are actually dynamic? Doesn't it impact performance if a truly dynamic object is marked static?

 

No, only static game objects. If you set an dynamic game object to static, it's cannot move.

 

Marking a gameObject as Static, for batching, will have zero effect on the physics of the object. You can absolutely move it. If you move such an object the combined mesh itself will not move, however you can do all sorts of things to get around this.

For example:
- Moving a root object will correctly move its static children
- Using the batching utility to recombine meshes (expensive) after moving static objects
- Instantiating a dynamic object at runtime then when it's done moving, making it static with the utility

I would suggest re-wording or removing #8. Moving every object in the Scene underneath an empty GameObject and marking everything Static doesn't seem like a good setup. One should mark actual static objects as static and leave the rest alone, or deal with them at runtime as needed.

 

8.Child all static game objects to an empty game object (called "Scene")and set its as static for static batching and reduce draw calls

Making all statics as child of the scene game object, just makes your hierarchy cleaner. You can place each static game objects anywhere in your hierarchy.

I have read this in unity manual and I've tested . It's work correctly and increase my frame rate. (I read it in unity 4 manual)

Unity Manual Link

 

I found a way to detect and set screen aspect ratio based on native screen resolution:
This should work on all devices

Code (CSharp):

1.     void Start ()
2.     {
3.  
4.         float xx = Screen.width;
5.         float yy = Screen.height;
6.  
7.         Screen.SetResolution (1280, 720, true);
8.         Camera.main.aspect = xx / yy;
9.  
10. }

And another way :

Code (CSharp):

1.     void Start ()
2.     {
3.  
4.         // Read and save native screen resolution in game first scene
5.         if (PlayerPrefs.GetFloat ("NativeWidth") == 0  || PlayerPrefs.GetFloat ("NativeHeight") == 0) {
6.             PlayerPrefs.SetFloat ("NativeWidth", Screen.width);
7.             PlayerPrefs.SetFloat ("NativeHeight", Screen.height);
8.         }
9.  
10.         // Set your favourit resolution
11.         Screen.SetResolution (1280, 720, true);
12.  
13.         // Set the camera aspect ratio based on native resolution
14.         Camera.main.aspect = PlayerPrefs.GetFloat ("NativeWidth") / PlayerPrefs.GetFloat ("NativeHeight");
15.  
16.  

 

Nice. Any graphics programmer would know this.
Additionally, not exactly android-related, but if you need to set a 1:1 ratio (for example, shadow-mapping camera) then just setting Camera.aspect to 1 is all you need to do.

A pseudo-widescreen for 4:3 content can be done with this as well, if setting a 4:3 res results in faster performance on your device. (Nintendo Wii games did this for it's 16:9 setting)

EDIT: Turns out the first code sample does the latter point I mentioned in reverse.

 

Standard shader behavior is different between ES 2.0 and ES 3.1 api mode in player settings:

 

Interesting. Although the reflection being better distorted on GLES3 makes sense.
Is that shot using a cubemap or an actual realtime mirror?

EDIT: Also, if one looks closely, the car reflections have better filtering on GLES3, probably due to being able to use texCUBElod on GLES3 vs GLES2 texCUBEbias

 

1. used baked reflection probes on Standard shader

2. In ES3 mode, reflections quality are same as pc version on all standard shaders . I didn't tested legacy cubemnap shader quality. But i already had read about better cubemap quality in ES3 features.

 

I forgotten tell this that when using ES2.0 api,reflections still good on ES2 device. But when you are using API ES2 on ES3 device, reflections are corrupted!!!
So just switch to Automatic API Level mode in player settings

 

If you believe some things are wrong or bugged, please file a report.

 

no it's not a bug.The problem is reasonable

 

True. ES3's actually pretty good, only problem is some phones don't play nice with GLES3. (Like mine for a long time until the bug with GLES3 and Samsung handsets was fixed a while back)

 

What about "Player Settings" and "Quality Settings". Any tips for theese?

 

Player settings are good by default.
for Quality settings refer to post #2